Tag: title shots

Bellator announced some changes to its title-contender structure today, and I’m going to do my best to summarize them in one sentence: Basically, if you win a Bellator tournament and receive a title shot, you no longer have to win another tournament in order to get another title shot. Which is weird, because didn’t they already kill that rule a long time ago? I mean, how else did Eddie Alvarez vs. Michael Chandler 2 and 3 get booked? I can think of several instances where Bellator’s vow that “title shots are earned, not given” hasn’t meant a whole lot.

So that’s the short version. Now read the press release that they actually sent out and get the Excedrin ready:

All Bellator Tournament Winners Now In World Title Shot Pool

Newport Beach, Calif. (June 12, 2014) – With Bellator’s 2014 Summer Series having just begun last Friday, Bellator Chairman & CEO Bjorn Rebney announced today that the promotion has made an addition to its real sport, tournament based* format that allows former Bellator Tournament winners the potential to be granted a World Title fight without going back into The Toughest Tournament in Sports.**

“Just like we’ve done since day one, any fighter who wins The Toughest Tournament in Sports will still be guaranteed a World Title*** fight,” Rebney said. “The addition I’m making here, that I’m really excited about, is if you’ve won a tournament, you’ll join an elite group of athletes who we can grant a world title fight to at any time.”

In case you haven’t been paying attention — or simply refuse to believe it — the next UFC light-heavyweight title contender will be selected from a crop of four guys who have previously been destroyed by current champion Jon Jones. AndImeandestroyed. Obviously, the lucky challenger could wind up taking on Dan Henderson instead, but we’re still talking about a quartet of fighters who have already proven that they’re somewhat less than belt-worthy.

Does the weak contender pool at light-heavyweight represent a low-water mark for UFC title challengers? Hardly. Even if the shot goes to Brandon Vera — a guy who has gone 1-2 with one no-contest in his last four fights — he’d be coming in with a win over a legend like Shogun, which is nothing to sneeze at. So let’s put all this criticism into perspective, and take a look at seven guys who really didn’t deserve a UFC title fight when one was handed to them…

In Tank’s defense, he was coming in on short-notice as an injury replacement for Dan Severn — but still, you’d think the UFC could hustle up a more legitimate challenger for their heavyweight belt. After all, we’re not talking about the Tank Abbott of 1995 who was knocking dudes out then mocking their seizures. We’re talking about the Tank Abbott of 1997 who had already been exposed as hopelessly one-dimensional, and had lost his last two fights against Vitor Belfort and Don Frye. Coincidentally, Belfort was on the UFC 15 card as well, in a heavyweight title eliminator against Randy Couture — and if either of those guys were drafted for the main event in Tank’s place, we might not have been subjected to the sad sight of Abbott stumbling around and wheezing after eight minutes of battle, too exhausted to defend leg kicks.

It’s good to know that we weren’t alone in our confusion when it was announced that the winner of either the Mauricio Rua/Brandon Vera or Lyoto Machida/Ryan Bader bouts, specifically the former, would be in line for the next title shot at 205 lbs. Given that current champion Jon Jones has walked through all four of those gentlemen before, we struggled to find the reasoning behind the alleged title shot that supposedly awaited the most impressive winner from this weekend’s UFC on FOX 4 event. Then again, Rich Franklin has decided to chase after middleweight gold and revenge for a third time (which totally wont end in his untimely death), so maybe we were too quick to write off these former champions, TUF winners, and hype machines. In either case, Bones took to his Twitter account to voice his frustration, sending out the above tweet yesterday which simply states “Scratching my head.”

But perhaps even more confounding than the UFC’s apparent apathy in regards to JBJ was the realization that the light heavyweight division, one of the most stacked and competitive divisions in the UFC for some time, has nearly been cleared out in a little over a year. If Jones gets past Dan Henderson at UFC 151, something he obviously feels he is going to do as evidenced by the above tweet, there will arguably be only two viable candidates left for him to face: Alexander Gustafsson and Glover Teixeira.

Dana White has teased that the man known by the Potato Nation as “Bjones” is “ready for a big fight now”, leading us to believe that a meeting with Rashad Evans could be on the horizon. A victory over the former champ would all but cement the Swede’s position atop the division. As for Teixeira, it’s simply too early to tell. He looked great in his debut victory over Kyle Kingsbury, but needs to face at least one of the upper echelon fighters before we are convinced he is ready for a title shot. But for the moment, it appears that the LHW division needs an H-bomb like Nick Diaz needs a clue.

Besides the fact that Shogun was, at the risk of receiving even more hate mail than usual, owned by Jones at UFC 128, the man has gone win-loss in his past six fights for Christ’s sake. Can we at least let him collect two wins in a row before we declare him the top contender in the division? And the last we checked, it isn’t 2006 anymore, so how a win over Vera justifies a title shot is simply beyond any measure of sound reasoning that we could possibly offer you. Is this just a ploy by The Baldfather to try and hype the hype-less card that is UFC on FOX 4, or is the UFC’s matchmaking department on a permanent lunch break? As if the Mendes/McKenzie pairing wasn’t odd enough, now this nonsense happens.

And if you think that was the only baffling decision made by the UFC that we’re going to cover in this article, join us after the jump for an equally ridiculous potential matchup at 205 lbs.

“Listen, I know we’ve had our moments, but before you make your list just hear me out…” (Photo: Gossiboocrew.com)

We’re only a few hours into the new year, but unless your head hit the pillow just as the ball dropped, you’ve probably already carried some of your bad habits with you into 2012. We are creatures of habit, and change doesn’t come naturally to us. If it did, we wouldn’t make such a big production out of our ‘New Year’s Resolutions’. The sport of mixed martial arts and its fans are no different. Here’s a quick look at some of the bad habits we’ve picked up and poor decisions we’ve made over the past 12-months. Let’s hope we can leave them behind in yesteryear.